Page 59 of Dragon Gods

She slipped the small cups they’d found into her pack and they silently walked together back toward the steps along the wall. She went first, more sure on the steps after coming in and out of the cavern last night. Even still, her foot slipped twice trying to balance on the thin remnants of the staircase that once was. She didn’t fall and even Ocon managed to make his way out of the cenote shaking, but whole.

The forest was brightly lit by the time they made it out and the morning birds had already finished their sunrise songs, the sounds of the forest fading into the dull hum of day. Sofia was unsure if things truly looked brighter or if she was simply better rested than she’d been in the last couple of days. They hadn’t had any containers to take the water away with them, but they had drunk their fill and then some before leaving.

Still, every step she took away from the cavern and the ruins of her ancestors felt like a weight in her gut. From a young age, her people were taught of the savagery of her ancestors before the kings had come to save them all. How they lived in holes in the ground out of fear of the dragons and only knew how to gather food from the forest. But what they had built back there had been art.

She’d been tempted to take the dragon feather—proof of what she’d found. But she also knew that walking toward Suvi with proof of the dragons was the easiest way to get killed on sight if they were caught before she made it back to the base. She felt its absence and the distance with each step.

“What are the chances we’ll make it back to familiar territory today?” Ocon asked. His tone was rough and his face was set in a deep frown. She almost laughed because the damn man seemed grumpy.

She thought about prodding his poor mood, but shrugged instead. “Well, if the shapeshifters ran perfectly north with us and we have managed to walk perfectly south this entire time, then we might make it back to the tunnel entrance. Or the general area. Probably.”

“You could have just said you don’t know,” he said. “And I assume your plan is to find the tunnel and to take it back to the base.”

“It would be a safer bet than braving the wilds for an extra day.”

“Safer for you.”

She raised an eyebrow in his direction. “Yes.”

They fell into a silence that Sofia took comfort in. She didn’t want to talk to him and pretend they had anything in common. She didn’t want to know anything about the people she had been fighting against. All it would do is make the guilt heavier when the time came to do what the resistance needed.

She had heard the passion in his voice the night before as he had talked of those who had died in the ongoing fight between their people. Could she truly trust such flowery words without the proof to back them up? The king and his people always talked of peace and saving lives, but they’d order the murder of a Dragonborn without regret in their next breath.

And even if she trusted Ocon’s own goodwill, it didn’t change what the others were doing—what his father and Chief Commander Harlow had done in the name of justice. The king’s men needed to pay for the blood they had spilled.

She didn’t need to hear Ocon’s excuses, true or not. Perhaps she could get away with walking the rest of the distance in silence. The sounds of the forest were calming with the sun brushing warm against her skin.

Ocon, of course, had to ruin it.

“So what happened to your parents?”

She turned, eyes sharp as blades, a scream rising up in her chest. She was disappointed when he didn’t flinch. “How is that any of your business?”

“You know my father. It only seems fair.”

Her fists clenched at her sides, but she didn’t punch him. “No one said that life is fair, little prince.”

“Remember that when I have you chained up in my personal dungeons when we get home.”

She spun around, back straight and jaw clenched.

“Over my dead body.”

“I can arrange that.”

CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE

FOX

Fox wondered how hard it would be to knock the woman out and simply carry her back to Suvi gagged and tied, because at this point, the chief commander would be lucky if they made it back before Fox killed her.

He was in a particularly grouchy mood after Sofia woke him by flinging him off their makeshift bed, cock harder than it had been in blinks. She wasn’t an ugly woman; even he had to admit that. Her hair was always a tangled mess and her eyes were too big for her face, but her body was curved and muscled and he spent too much time staring at her lips, soft and pink. She looked the most beautiful when she was angry and ranting. When her cheeks flushed red, it brought out the sprinkle of her freckles across the bridge of her nose, and her green eyes practically glowed with passion.

But none of that made her ranting and raving any moretrue.The Dragonborn weren’t innocent. The resistance wasn’t innocent, and their movement deserved to be torn down, each and every rebel punished for the lives they’d taken.

He wasn’t lying to her when he said she’d been the one to move closer to him in the night. He would have argued, but the warmth of her body pressed against his chest had lulled him to sleep almost immediately. Somehow, despite spending days in the rainforest and refusing to wash off in the lake, her thick curls smelled of coconut. Based on the few whiffs he’d gotten of himself—he did not.

And as a thanks for preventing her from freezing to death due to her own stubbornness the night before, he’d gotten thrown on his ass.

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